


Moonrise

by kuzibah



Category: Being Human (UK)
Genre: Animal Death, Gen, Gun Violence, original character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 19:13:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16181420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuzibah/pseuds/kuzibah
Summary: The first full moon after the events of the S2 finale.





	Moonrise

It’s coming.

They all know it, and George and Nina are restless and snapping at one another, but they can’t stop it. Kemp is gone and Lucy’s blood still stains the flattened earth in the yard and Annie is trapped… somewhere. (“Hell,” says George. “Purgatory,” Mitchell argues.) Yet the moon continues to rise, and wax fuller each night, uncaring.

They should be fine. Their farmhouse is remote, and surrounded by several streams to pen in the werewolves, most of the reason it was chosen. And Mitchell volunteers to get the chicken and drag it through the woods after George describes the procedure, but there’s a bit of a misunderstanding, and Mitchell brings home a live chicken under his arm. He and George have a ridiculous argument about it (“You should have _said_ a chicken from the market!” “A normal person would have assumed!”) until Nina takes the chicken from Mitchell and calmly wrings its neck.

“There,” she says, handing it back. “Problem solved.”

Chastened, Mitchell silently fetches a spool of twine.

~~~~

Mitchell insists on following them into the woods, even though George argues loudly against it, but he promises to watch from up a tree, on the other side of a stream from where they’ll transform, and the two werewolves reluctantly agree. Mitchell says it’s so he can survey the area, make sure it really is as isolated as they hope, but the truth is he’s shit-scared that he missed one of those bastards from the “institute,” that one of them was off ranting on a street corner or passing out leaflets when he was working his way through the rest of them. Lucy found them. And Kemp. It’s not so far-fetched to think that there are others out there, just waiting for that moment of vulnerability. 

He suspects Nina has guessed the real reason, at least by the time she and George have made their way to the soft little hollow in a stand of pines, given the knowing look she shoots to Mitchell, a few hundred feet away. The two of them strip out their clothes, and George folds his arms around Nina, comforting her. Mitchell remembers that this is only her third transformation, and her first in George’s presence, and he turns his eyes away to afford them as much privacy as they are able to have.

The change is announced by George’s screams, followed closely by Nina’s. Mitchell looks back to see them throw themselves away from one another and crouch on the forest floor, shuddering, convulsing, twisting in agony. He’s seen this happen before, but each time he is amazed and horrified anew. 

After what seems like hours, their transformation is complete, and for all the gentleness they had with one another in their human form, they are all ferocity now. They fly at one another so savagely that Mitchell is afraid that one might kill the other, but they only snap their jaws and growl and bark until at last the wolf that was Nina cowers low, rolls her head against the ground, exposing her throat. The wolf that was George, all gentleness again, carefully touches it with his teeth.

Mitchell thinks wildly for a moment that he might mount her, a possibility he hadn’t thought about before now, but no. In a moment the show of dominance is over, and the werewolves turn their attention to him. They snarl in his direction, and pace the edge of the stream, seemingly furious at being unable to cross. Mitchell watches, fascinated. The stream is small, barely a few inches of water tumbling over the mud, but for the werewolves, it might as well be a twenty-foot wall. 

They paw the ground in frustration and lope along the water’s edge, but after awhile they seem to lose interest, catching a scent along the ground (probably the chicken) and setting off after it instead.

Mitchell climbs down from his perch, and at a discreet distance trails the werewolves into the darkness.

~~~~

It was last few months of the War, though Mitchell and Seth didn’t know it. Herrick may have; he always seemed to be thinking a few steps ahead of humanity, but if he did know, he didn’t say. The three vampires were holed up in a French farmhouse while their unit camped in the woods nearby, and Herrick seemed to be taking ironic amusement in being especially gracious to the farmer and his family, knowing the lot of them would be dead in the morning. He gave money to the farmer’s wife, and some of their precious contraband chocolates to the two little ones.

Herrick had whispered his plan to his two companions, all smiles again when the farmer offered warm water and soap and fresh glasses of milk, and looking at the apple-cheeked faces of the children, Mitchell felt sick to his stomach. He was getting used to the slaughter. The betrayal, he didn’t think he ever would. 

“Excusez-moi, monsieur,” the farmer interrupted. “Mon employé, une trayeuse, elle a peur pour retourner à la maison ce soir.”

“Man’s got a milkmaid,” Seth translated sullenly. “She’s afraid to go home.”

Herrick smiled magnanimously. “We don’t mind if she stays,” he said. “The more, the merrier, right, boys?”

The family and their employee stayed clear of the soldiers that evening, although a bottle of Bordeaux did find its way to the table. Later, the vampires pretended to sleep while listening into the night for the utter stillness that told them their prey was deeply asleep. 

Mitchell and Seth made short work of the farmer and his wife, while Herrick laid claim to the two children. When they met again in the hall, Herrick wiped the blood from his mouth and said, “now, where’s the pretty little milkmaid?”

A quick search of the house turned up nothing, and Herrick chuckled in anticipation. “Little kitten is hiding,” he said. “Mitchell, pay attention, and I’ll teach you a bit about your new nature. Now, boys, not a sound.”

Mitchell followed Seth and Herrick’s lead and held himself very still, not breathing and listening as hard as he could. “Hear it?” Herrick whispered, and in a moment, he could. A panting breath, with a bit of a wheeze, as though the person breathing were trying to muffle the sound. 

“Where is she?” Herrick asked, and Mitchell pointed through the door to the wooden box beside the fireplace where kindling was kept. It barely looked large enough to hide one of the children, let alone a nearly-grown woman, but as he concentrated, it was obvious. The milkmaid was hiding within. 

“Go get her, boy,” Herrick growled, but Mitchell hesitated. 

“Never mind,” Seth said. “I’ll go.” And in three strides he was across the room, and throwing open the box. 

Inside the girl screamed, and Seth put a hand over her mouth and dragged her out. He pulled her close to him, his fangs extended, and Mitchell expected she’d be drained in short order, but instead Seth flung her to the floor with a cry of disgust.

“Ugh, Herrick,” he complained, groping for a handkerchief and covering his nose and mouth as though to block out a noxious smell. 

Herrick crossed to where the girl was cowering and took a delicate sniff. “Not a kitten at all,” he said. “We’ve a little bitch-pup instead.”

Mitchell frowned, and Herrick beckoned him into the room. “Take a whiff, Mitchell,” he said. “Do you smell that?”

And Mitchell did, though he couldn’t place it. It was full of darkness and violence. In a way, it reminded him of the scent of other vampires, but where Herrick and Seth smelled of the dry dust of something long-decayed, the maid was fresher, something recently gone rotten.

“What is it?” 

“What d’you mean, ‘what is it’?” Seth sneered. “It’s a fucking animal, is what it is.”

“The _loup-garou_ ,” Herrick announced, and the girl on the floor began to cry. “The lycanthrope, or lyco for short. Or, as proper Englishmen say, the werewolf.”

“Bullshit,” Mitchell muttered, and Herrick’s eyebrows darted up.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “You die, rise again as a living corpse, go forth and sustain yourself on human blood, and you call bullshit on werewolves?”

Well, when he put it that way, Mitchell did have to admit it was a little ridiculous. “So what else is there?” he asked.

“What isn’t possible?” Herrick said. “‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’ as the bard said.”

Mitchell looked down at the sobbing girl again. She hardly looked like a fellow creature of darkness, but then again, the night of the full moon was probably a much different story. “So what do we do with her?” he said.

“Well, you can’t eat her, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Seth said. “Probably contract… hydrophobia or something.”

“And she knows what we are,” Herrick mused, “so we can’t let her go. Clearly, there’s only one option.” And in a blur of motion, he had drawn and fired his service revolver into the girl’s head.

“Oy!” Seth shouted. “We could have had some fun with her!”

“For God’s sake, Seth, we have better ways to spend our time than beating girls to bloody pulps, lyco or not” Herrick scolded. “Now get this mess cleared away. We need to be ready to move in the morning.”

~~~~

The secret nocturnal life of the two werewolves is more surprising than Mitchell had guessed, and he can practically hear David Attenborough’s narration in his head as he watches them stalk and hunt. Wolf-George is clearly the leader, and Wolf-Nina follows him, submissive, even when it is clear she has other ideas. Mitchell thinks the human Nina would never stop torturing George if she had any hint that this was how she behaved when the moon was full. And this thought brings worry about the day when the Nina-werewolf decides she can lead their little pack of two. George might come home that morning with more than just a few scratches from the underbrush.

It is the latter part of the night, when the moon is starting its descent into the west, when the two werewolves appear to catch the scent of something interesting. They sniff the ground deeply, and paw at the litter of dried leaves. In a moment, they are both off, moving gracefully in unison as they bound among the trees. Mitchell must call on all of his vampire powers just to keep up.

Suddenly the werewolves stop, both in the same instant, as though hearing an invisible signal. Mitchell halts a second later, grateful that they are so preoccupied with their prey that they don’t hear his step. He squints into the darkness, and then sees what they see. 

It’s a sheep that has clearly escaped its farm and wandered into the wilderness. Its wool is matted and dirty, and it’s thinner than the sheep Mitchell’s seen at the neighboring farms. It seems to become aware of its stalkers, and lets out a pathetic bleat. Mitchell almost felt sorry for it until that moment, but the sound is so ill-suited to survival in the wild that he realizes a quick slaughter is probably for the best.

The werewolves clearly agree, and fall on the beast with such terrifying ferocity that even Mitchell is taken aback. They rip the sheep into ragged, bloody pieces, taking it in their jaws and shaking furiously, spattering the tree trunks around them with gore, and tossing viscera into the low-hanging branches. 

Then they begin to feed, swallowing bloody mouthfuls of meat, and licking their gruesome jaws. Watching them, even knowing that they are his friends, Mitchell cannot see any of George or Nina in them at all.

~~~~

They fall asleep near dawn in the still-steaming carcass, and Mitchell watches the transformation process reverse itself. After the agony at nightfall, the return to human form is unexpectedly peaceful, and George and Nina barely stir. Mitchell unshoulders his rucksack and pulls out two thin blankets as he joins them. They awaken at his approach, looking disoriented and somewhat embarrassed to be found this way, naked and covered in blood and dirt. Mitchell wishes he’d had the forethought to pack some wet-naps. 

They take the blankets from him, silently but gratefully, and together they begin the long walk back to the house.


End file.
